birthday party

okay, so i know it's taking me forever to get all this birthday stuff done.  one day i will have a system for blogging, and stay up to date with everything.  unfortunately, that day has yet to come!  so, i will continue with my catching up, and hope that you all understand.  

i forgot about the camera, until katie mentioned it (thanks, katie!).  so, the first half of the party is unfortunately undocumented.  there were about 14 kids in total, and they all ran out to the backyard to play while everyone arrived.  it was pretty crazy - a bunch of 4 year old boys (there were some girls too, but they arrived later) running around the yard in a pack, yelling.  pretty fun to watch, actually.  we were just glad they were letting their energy out in a constructive way.

after they got some of their energy out, we started our super-hero training.  (we had a spiderman theme, as requested by the birthday boy.  i made the invites like a comic book, and spiderman invited each kid to the birthday.)  for our training, everyone took turns climbing up a wall (the rope ladder on our swing set), to rescue the person (one of naomi's dolls) who was stuck.  the kids had a blast doing this - we all cheered for them, and called them spiderman _fill in the name___ (like christopher was spiderman christopher).   next we used their spidey senses.  i had a plate of different kinds of fruit.  they memorized what was there, and then i would take something away.  they would have to remember and tell me what was missing.  after that, we kicked a ball into a target to practice our aim.  

the craziest part of the course was the web-slinging.  i had a can of silly string for each kid, and they all tried to hit a target i had set up.  thanks to dave, it turned into a silly string war, which was a blast, of course.  we also practiced our strength with some of those blow up balloons you can punch.  the final course of our super-hero training was a strength test on a pinata. :)  this is where the camera was finally remembered (thanks for taking the pictures katie! if it wasn't for you, there wouldn't be any pictures at all!).

candy, candy, candy!

(actually, i do have to say that the kids were surprisingly good about the candy.  no fighting or anything.  we actually had candy left over)

the final product

the happy helper :) 

(dave is the guy to have at a party - he did all the outside clean up while we were doing pizza.  he even cleaned up all the silly string from the yard.  that wasn't a small job :)

the girls in the kitchen.  thanks for staying and helping melissa and holly!

naomi enjoyed the fun, but was glad for a quiet house after everyone left

after the pinata, i had pizza dough shaped into individual sized pizzas for each kid.  they got to choose their toppings, and make their own pizza.

while the pizza was cooking, they watched The Incredibles, since they're a super-hero family and everything.

christopher had a great time at his party, and i actually had a fun time too.  usually i'm running around like a crazy person, and don't get to enjoy much.  i did a bunch of prep work this time, and it payed off.  

until next year!